Communities in OSNs can emerge for many reasons. A key driver can be homophily [1]}, where some underlying similarity between users in a community leads to a higher number of edges between these users than with users in a different community.
[2]} investigates homophily formation and evolution in a online social buyers setting.
Here,
a community builds trust and supports the activity of online purchases, which is the motivation for more in depth research
into the nature of the inter-community connections. Companies have an interest
in their brand identity within OSN communities, as users now have the ability to
broadcast brand information to many other users within their social reach.
Although not based on data
from OSNs, [3]} discusses the
attributes that users utilize their associations, and how companies should work to cultivate
their brand presence with customers. The authors also raise many interesting questions concerning
the dynamic elements of brand presence which are relevant to our work.
